by Sawyer Black
It was on every channel.
Satanic cult sex traffickers, broken up by Burg City’s finest. They didn’t get an interview with Stone or Hansen, but they caught Mayor Lucius on the front porch of his mansion, and Commissioner Voight standing behind him in the shadows. The mayor looked like his brother. Slick gray hair, but without the goatee.
“Tonight,” the mayor said as if he wasn’t complicit in the evil, “working in concert with the Burg City Harbor Patrol, the 6th Precinct of the Burg City Police Department has won a victory for the children of this great city. Heroes, every one.”
He looked at the camera, and Henry felt like the man could see him through the TV. “But rest assured, evil shall not win.”
Henry wanted to be there whenever this man was brought down.
They left the apartment in small groups. Boothe and Maria first. Nadia and Charlie with Frank tagging along like a small yapping dog, running at their heels for attention.
Ramiel said he was going to look at the stars and pray. He stood and looked at Henry before leaving.
“What?” Henry said. “You don’t feel good about what we did?”
“I feel good about the result.”
“Just not the methods?”
Ramiel lowered his head. “I wonder if it was truly God’s vengeance …”
“Or if it was your own?”
“Yes.”
Henry looked at the closed bedroom door. He had hoped that Aela would come out, but seeing her face after she healed Scott, he wasn’t sure she’d ever come back out. “Look, I gotta say goodbye to someone. Why don’t you go up there and ask Him?”
Ramiel nodded then left by the front door, his head hanging down in thought.
Henry pulled Mike Serafino over his shoulders like he had pulled on the hoodie for so many months, and instead of dropping into the shadows, he thought of his house on La Paz. The front porch with the Gnome Sweet Gnome welcome mat, the little cartoon face smiling out from the upper corner.
He had a sudden certainty that his power had grown tonight, perhaps fueled by the carnage. Maybe he could do Boothe’s trick and teleport back to his old place.
Might as well try.
The apartment compressed into a dot that resolved into his old front door. It swung open into a foyer full of shadows.
It worked! Fuck yeah!
He looked around, but the neighborhood was dark. A few porch lights. Streetlamps on the corners. He took a hesitant step inside, drawing a breath to shout Samantha’s name.
A dark trail on the floor. A faint glimmer of reflected light. Glistening red. His breath left him as he charged inside. Henry’s memory put Amélie at the top of the stairs, screaming for him to save her. Samantha standing with horror in her eyes.
Henry dismissed it as he slipped in blood turning into the living room. It bloomed out into a pentagram scrawled on the floor. The furniture had been pushed back to accommodate the artist, and there was so much fucking blood.
If that’s her blood, she’s dead.
Please be someone else’s blood.
Nobody.
His eyes adjusted to the dark, and he searched in every corner. Feeling along the shelves of the entertainment center. Under the cushions. On the coffee table, he found a note taped to the remote control. The remote was a big color touchscreen that some local installer had programmed for him. It could handle the whole house, but he had only ever used it for music, and to flip between Comedy Central and the History Channel.
He snatched the note and held it to his eyes. Words in marker. He could still smell the ink.
Watch the movie.
He tapped the remote and the screen lit in his hands. He closed his eyes, trying to remember the sequence that turned everything on and started the DVD player. He looked down, and the icons swam together. The TV came on with a pop of power. He pointed the remote at the DVD player, even though he knew it wasn’t line-of-sight. He could have pressed play from the bathroom.
The hum of the player as the disc spun up to speed, then the TV brightened on a scene from Henry's nightmares.
Samantha sat at the head of a table. A white gag in her mouth tangled in her black hair. Another strip of white tied over her eyes. Her hands were under the table, but she struggled to prove she was tied. He tossed the remote on the couch behind him and walked to the center of the room as the speakers filled with her whimpering cries.
“Henry.”
Pastor Owen’s voice. Calm and sympathetic. Soft yet passionate. A voice that had helped him through some of his darkest times. A voice that led Samantha back into the light after Henry’s death. It sounded like betrayal and pain. The biggest lie he’d ever been told.
“There was a time when I thought I might try to recruit you. When your lust for killing had so overwhelmed any voice of reason that there was a possibility you might listen to mine. As we both know, that never happened. Probably because, and I know you would never admit it, you are a good man. And this woman is the reason. My biggest mistake was not killing her, too. You see, Henry, you were at the heart of a prophecy. Well, maybe not the heart, for that honor was Adam’s, but you were still there. It took me far too long to see that, but when I discovered it, I thought she would be the key to controlling you, and in a way, she was.
“Let no one deceive you by any means, for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first. The man of sin will be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in His temple, showing himself that he is God.
“Where is Adam now, Henry? In his temple in Solitude. With his congregation, who worship him above Jehovah. Is that not the destiny of the Antichrist?”
Henry remembered Adam’s prayer in the forest. Praying not to God, but to himself, like he was reassuring himself of his own power. Henry shook his head, ready to deny the pastor in spite of his own memories, but Pastor Owen continued.
“And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast.”
Adam had healed himself after the Lost had attacked, but so what?
I heal all the time.
But then again, I’m a demon.
“Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is Christ? Not me, Henry. I have believed my entire life. Devoted my every waking moment to His word. And what does His word tell us, Henry? Every spirit who confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. That’s me. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but only until the one who now restrains it is removed.”
Pastor Owen stepped into view. Wearing the red robe of an Order From Chaos priest, he stood behind Samantha and put his hands on her shoulders. She jumped and cried out. The pastor smiled.
“And that’s you. The false prophet. But we will not allow the boy to ascend to Heaven, where he will be destroyed. Nor will we let him descend into Hell. Even if the result is that the devil is thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet drown, we will not let him be tormented day and night forever.
“Adam’s day will not come until the rebellion comes first, and it has already begun. And in that rebellion, the Lord will not be able to smite him with His breath as is foretold in the bible. Because we will have secured Adam’s reign. I have prepared for his coming for over forty years, laying his kingdom bare for him, and you have strengthened his resolve. You, his false prophet, and me, his general. His Paladin.”
Pastor Owen reached inside his robes and pulled free a knife. Curved with a golden handle, jewels glittered on the hilt. He laid the blade against Samantha’s arm. “You will come to me, Henry. In two days, I will summon you. I apologize for making you wait, but my attention is divided at the moment. When you receive my message, I urge you to follow its instructions. I see now that you are the key to my victory, for the boy loves you. He will do whatever you ask. Whatever you ask, Henry.
�
��We will do great things together. And lest you think you will not do as I tell you, if you don’t, I will kill Samantha. But first, every Ravager under my control will rape her. Over and over, devouring her soul one bloody bite at a time.”
Henry’s legs folded, and his knees hit the floor in the center of the pentagram. Even now, she suffered for him.
Pastor Owen turned the knife so the edge was against her arm. “Tell me, Henry. Have you started killing again?”
He swiped the knife in a savage slash that split her arm open below her shoulder. Blood pulsed out to splash on the table, flooding over the pastor’s hand. Samantha’s scream was severed by the video’s death.
Henry tipped his head back and howled. The pentagram burst into flame, fire exploding in a shower of sparks. He drew a breath full of heat and smoke then howled again. His voice cracked and split. But still, he howled. His steaming breath plumed with the smoke.
The flames grew like a beast that swelled as it ate, growing into an inferno, feasting on every room. His home had betrayed him. Betrayed his family. He fed the flames with his rage, and by the time the fire department arrived, it was a swirling tornado.
He sat in the center of a previous life, and he watched the firefighters prepare their hoses. Scurrying to battle.
Henry pulled the heat into his heart, and the flames died in a rush. Swirling smoke. Frantic shouts. In the sudden darkness, Henry made his escape, roaring into the shadows.
He only had to keep living for another two days.
Chapter Twenty-Five
In an alley behind a liquor store. Cane Street Beverage. Squinting into the bright lights bleeding across the sidewalk.
Numb fingers.
Henry felt the fear and tension from inside. Even through his stumbling rage, it called him.
Two tries for him to pull the Serafino suit on. Hauling it from his fragmenting memories. Samantha’s face, smiling at him from across the table. Morning sun shining through the steam rising from her coffee. The thumping steps of Amélie in the hallway upstairs. His daughter’s exuberant shout, and he was pretty sure that she’d slid down the banister.
Sam’s eyes had risen over his shoulders, and her smile became a grin. Amélie stood in the doorway, her face flush and eyes wide. “Waffles!”
Their last morning as a family.
Samantha looking over his shoulder at the top of the stairs. The gun digging into the back of his head.
The blood flowing down her arm.
Henry dried his cheeks on his jacket sleeve and emerged from the shadows. An empty sidewalk and a single car rolling by, bass shaking the storefront windows. A bell jangled overhead as he opened the door. The reek of disinfectant. The tang of panic in the air.
“As-salaam-alaikum.” The voice was pinched, as if speaking caused him pain.
Henry turned to the man behind the counter. His jaw was set in a forced smile, standing with his hands behind his back. His face was ravaged with deep acne scarring, and his scrappy beard stuck out like a pine tree. His eyes shifted to the side and back.
Henry followed the line of the man’s eyes, and two men stepped out from behind a Red Bull cooler at the end of the aisle. White men with cruel faces that looked like Pastor Owen’s. Another man walked out of a door behind the counter. A third white man, taller than the other two. Owen Number Three. He sidled up to the clerk, and Henry tasted more fear as the cashier inhaled deep and closed his eyes.
Henry waved. “Alaikum-salaam.”
“What are you doin’ in here, man?” Owen One said.
Henry pointed to the store’s interior. “Well, see, I wanna get super drunk, and this place happens to have the exact thing I need to make that happen, so …”
“Man, shut the fuck up.”
“You asked! I’m just trying to have a conversation.”
Owen Two pulled a gun. “Have a conversation with this, bitch.”
“Oh, I get it. This is a robbery.”
“That’s right.” Owen Two shifted his pistol toward the clerk. “We’re robbing this motherfucker right here.”
Owen One slid a gun from the back of his waistband. “You might as well give us all your money, too.”
Henry didn’t care what Owen Three was doing. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “You know what? I’m not really in the mood for this shit tonight, guys. I’m just gonna kill you. How’s that?”
He opened his eyes. The Owens stared at him as if were a talking bug. Before they could gather whatever brains they had for a comeback, Henry stepped out of Mike Serafino, and the demon spread his hands. “Ta-da, motherfuckers!”
Owen One opened fire, his tripping feet carrying him back. Screaming.
Henry walked forward with a smile, steam jetting from his nostrils. Bullets ripped into him, struck his chest, his neck. Black blood splattered out.
Over the screams and thunder, Henry’s own laughter sounded cruel in his ears.
Owen One fell on his ass as Owen Two dove into the aisle. Henry swung, and his claws tore the gun away, along with the hand holding it. Owen One screamed and looked at the flowing stump with horror. His blood spurted up to mix with Henry’s as it dripped down his arm. Henry kicked the fucker in the shoulder, laying him out flat. He dropped a knee on the center of Owen One’s chest, and he wrapped his hand around the asshole’s throat.
He bent to stare into the terror in the guy’s eyes as he squeezed. His fingertips met through his fleshy neck. Blood sprayed into his face and into his open mouth. The life-force rose up and Henry breathed him in. It wasn’t enough.
He jumped up and launched himself down the aisle.
Owen Two scrambled back. A frantic crabwalk, the gun clacking and sliding along the tile floor.
Henry jumped, spreading out and falling, then he dropped his fist onto the guy’s face like a red hammer.
His head exploded like a ketchup packet under a boot heel. Spreading to either side, splashing up on the pork rinds and corn nuts. Covering Henry from forehead to belly button. The guy’s life-force joined the other.
Henry still wasn’t satisfied.
He stood and turned to face the clerk and Owen Three. They stood pressed against each other, their horror bridging the gap between race and religion. The clerk whispered. “A’oodhu bi kalimat-illah il-tammati min ghadabihi wa ‘iqabihi.”
Henry broke into a run, and the clerk’s whisper became a shout. “Wa min sharri ‘ibadihi wa min hamazat al-shayateeni wa an yahduroon!”
Henry leaped over the counter.
Owen Three stepped around the clerk, a silent scream stretching his lips, and the knife he’d been holding to the clerk’s back rose up. His head split apart under Henry’s claws, and the knife went into Henry’s chest to the hilt.
His weight crushed Owen Three against the wall of cigarettes behind the counter. The knife twisted from his death grip, and Henry spun away, doubling over the blade that hung between his ribs.
It pressed against his lungs, scraping blood into his breath. He left it there as he pulled in the swirling energy that had once made a man and limped out from behind the counter. His feet slid in the blood, and he threw his arms out for balance. The clerk whimpered behind him, and he didn’t bother to tell the guy that it was all okay.
Because it wasn’t.
Behind the loose bottles of whiskey, he found it by the case. A bottled-in-bond rye. He stood with the box under his arm and walked toward the back of the store. Into the shadows through a dark doorway.
He spread through Burg City, stretching from the dark of a back doorstep to the shadow under a dumpster to the gap between a pair of abandoned warehouses. Faster than thought, Henry shot up his building and landed on the roof. He emerged from a corner hidden from the stars by a corrugated overhang, then slid down to sit with his back against the wall.
He propped his elbow on the booze and dug his claws through the box looking for a bottle.
“You talk to God, yet?”
Ramiel sat with
crossed legs, looking up at the sky. “I did.”
Henry stuck the bottle between the vice of his thighs and spun off the cap. “What did He say?”
“He set my heart at ease. There are often no answers to the most difficult questions during strange days.”
“Uh-huh.” Henry brought the bottle to his lips, wincing as the blade ground against bone in his chest. Blood welled from his right eye, dripping onto his hand as he took a deep drink.
Must have got shot in the face, too.
He sighed in pleasure and tipped his head back. “Well, I got a question for you. What do you say?”
Ramiel lowered his gaze, eyes widening at the sight of Henry’s blood. The knife sticking out, bobbing with his breath. “What is your question?”
“Can you heal me?”
The angel shook his head. “I cannot.”
“But you can end my suffering, right?”
“Yes.”
“Because it wasn’t you that healed me in Solitude, was it? It was Aela.”
Ramiel nodded, lowering his eyes. “She asked me not to tell.”
“Oh, man. Now you’re a liar, too. I guess I’m a bad influence.”
Henry drained the bottle and tossed it to the side. It didn’t break, rolling in a crooked spiral to rest on the roof’s edge. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have much time left.”
“What does that mean?”
Henry opened another bottle. “It means, ol’ Remmy ol’ pal, that I’m going to get as drunk as I can while I wait for Pastor Owen to summon me. This shit’ll probably heal itself, anyway. Right?”
“What has happened, Henry?”
Henry lowered the bottle, tears mixing with the blood that poured from his eye. “I am the false prophet. The Antichrist’s general has kidnapped my wife, and he’s going to kill her if I … I don’t know … build the church of the beast.”
“When was this?”
“Just now. He’s gonna call me in two days. If I don’t do what he wants, he’ll throw her into the asylum with ten thousand maniacs. Fooling myself, really. Thinking she was safe.”